Chapter Twenty-Four
Robert made his way back to Huntington in record time, arriving before sundown, though Goliath, who thankfully had been recognized as fine horseflesh and thus had been stabled at Nottingham, was lathered and in need of rest before Robert’s impending departure.
“You’ve come back!” shrieked Bridget, racing down the steps to the keep as his guardsmen all descended from their posts to greet him.
“My lord! We couldn’t believe that the Sheriff of Nottingham attempted to oust you,” greeted a guard, the people of Huntington gathering around. “The steward didn’t hand over your keys to the vaults, sire, for we knew Lord Nottingham would pillage them. We insisted you kept the keys well hidden…”
He wished he could appreciate the warm welcome from his people, but his blood had not stopped racing with need to get to Mariel and determine who had turned traitor. He had at least a sennight of hard riding ahead of him. His face was ill-shaven, his hair hung long and stringy, but he knew there was no time to dawdle in a bath.
He breezed through the doors when he caught sight of Charlotte. Anger gripped him further. If she had betrayed him, how dare she have the audacity to remain at Huntington?
“What do you want here?” he demanded, striding to the chair in which she sat by the great hearth.
She looked up at him with confusion and stood, cowering back at the rage boiling on his face. “Whatever do you mean? I, I heard of your capture and couldn’t believe it was true.”
“Is that so?” he remarked.
“Robbie…Robert…what’s wrong? You look at me as if I’m spawned from the devil.”
“The Beast of Ayr had the luxury of seeing me bound in chains and beaten like a murderer would be flogged in a public square. And he had that luxury because someone within my walls betrayed me, someone he alluded to being a woman. Whoever this traitor was, they spoke of my plans to wed Mariel. I believe you once called her some disobedient waif. I wonder who it could be that I sat with more than a month ago, discussing my desire for Mariel Crawford. Only one woman, I told this. You, perchance?”
Charlotte opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, but still, no sound came out.
“Jonathan,” Robert called, and John stepped forward. “Remove Lady Charlotte to her chamber and see that she is detained.”
Though John looked sympathetic and Will, confused, for it was no secret he had taken a liking to Charlotte, John nodded his compliance.
Except Will stepped forward. “I’ll deliver her,” he said, giving Robert a steely glare. “Eh, Lady Charlotte, I do apologize. Come with me and I will see to your comfort whilst Robert gets to the bottom of this grand misunderstanding.”
“Robert…I have no idea what you mean…” she begged, ashen-faced. “I would never betray our friendship…”
But Robert had already turned around. “Bridget, where is Lady Anna?”
Bridget curtsied low, still trembling from his accusations moments ago.
“She left, m’lord. She returned to York the same day Sheriff Crawford came back. One of your guardsmen acted as escort to see her safely there.”
“Who?” Robert demanded.
Bridget imparted the name and the guard was summoned forth, though it quickly became apparent that Anna had left that day after Robert’s dismissal and had gone straight home, never crossing Crawford or Nottingham’s path.
Robert sighed, his anger making his blood throb at his temples, bestowing the king of all headaches upon him.
“Then tell Alice I need my personal effects packed,” he ordered Bridget, who curtsied low again. “I make haste to Scotland, to Castle Ayr, to retrieve my wife.”
“I’m sorry, sire,” she said, her head still bowed. “But Alice disappeared a month ago, the same night that Harold Crawford and William de Wendenal came in search of the Scottish girl.”
Robert glanced up to his gallery wrapping around the great hall and noted Charlotte almost out of sight at Will’s hand.
“Why?”
“I’ve no idea. But she had been grumbling for days that she couldn’t abide by ‘it’ anymore.”
“Abide by what?”
Bridget shrugged. “She didn’t say.”
But Robert knew, and dammit, a prickle of anxiousness began to twist in his gut. He had told Alice that day to deliver Mariel her gown and accessories in the defunct guard tower. He had tasked Alice since Bridget could not be found. Crawford’s words rang through his mind. He had indeed trusted those closest to him. Alice had been with his family since well before he was born and had been loyal to him and his father before him. Had Alice betrayed him? He thought harder. Just because he asked Alice to deliver a gown to Mariel didn’t mean Alice knew he had planned to elope with Mariel. Someone had to have told her.
“Lady Charlotte!” Robert called. His voice rang through the hall and into the gallery.
Moments later, Will returned down the corridor to peer over into the great hall with Charlotte in hand, a glare on his face.
“Did you happen to mention my intention to marry to anyone else?”
Charlotte, still white as a sheet, bowed her head. “Only Alice, your head servant, when she grumbled about having to prepare a bath for the Scottish woman. She came to me out of anger, complaining that you threw away someone like me for her. I tried to defend you, Robert, telling her that you wished to marry the woman, and that I was at peace with it and would she not also see fit to find peace with it, too.”
Robert chewed upon her response and looked at Will. Will looked back at him. He raked his hand through his messy hair then smoothed the young formation of a beard taking root.
“Did I say something, my lord?” Charlotte asked.
“Alice didn’t like Mariel?” he prompted.
Charlotte looked around, then down, not wishing to incite Robert’s anger further.
“Charlotte?” he said again, walking to stand beneath her so he might look up into her face.
Charlotte kept her eyes averted. “No, sire. Alice disliked her from the moment she heard, eh, Mariel, attack you from her sick bed when she was first brought here. She saw Lady Mariel as a wildling, uncouth and undeserving of such a wealthy English earl. As Alice and I helped your lady bathe and prepare a gown, she whispered to me that…Lord, must I say it?” she looked up helplessly.
“You must,” Robert replied, his neck still craned.
Charlotte continued in barely more than a whisper. “She said, ‘you can wash a piece of rubbish, but it’s still a piece of rubbish,’ and she wished not to waste the hot water. But I was quick to come to your woman’s defense and tell Alice that she served the Lord of Huntington, and that if you saw something fine in the woman, then she must accept the Scottish girl warmly or else do dishonor to you.” Charlotte looked away, at Will, then at the floor. “Your request of me, to help her, was a hard request to fulfill. But I value our friendship, I swear it, and did as you bade. For I knew that there was no hope for a future betwixt us.”
Robert sensed truth in her beseeching words. She had let slip his plans, but had not done so out of malice. He raked his hand through his hair once more, feeling guilt for snapping at Charlotte so, and turned back to Bridget.
“And you say she’s gone?”
“I didn’t see her after that, my lord,” Bridget replied. “Some men searched the castle for her, but found no trace. We knew not in which direction she might have gone, but an old woodsman who came begging at our gates said he saw a woman of her description talking to the Sheriff of Nottingham and that vile Sheriff of Ayrshire on the forest path toward Nottingham castle. He had hidden among the trees, too afraid to reveal himself to them, for he swore the men burned his cottage down, but she ended up heading toward Nottingham Castle with one of the sheriff’s soldiers… Do you think it was Alice? Do you think she had something to do with your arrest?”
Alice had been his father’s choice for head servant, and Robert had simply kept her on staff, for she had done her job efficiently, taking her loyalty for granted. It made sense. And he had learned a harsh lesson.
Turning to David, he spoke. “Pen a message to His Majesty at Nottingham Castle to look for Alice among his staff. If she’s there, she should be detained, for she is my traitor. I must get to Mariel.”
“We’re looking forward to having a new Lady of Huntington, m’lord.” Bridget smiled, curtseying. “The Scottish woman was interesting. I shall enjoy getting to know her. Bring her back, sire.”
He nodded his thanks to Bridget and turned on his heel, making haste for the stairs leading to his personal chambers. When he reached the steps, he turned around.
“Lady Charlotte,” he called across the chamber. “You needn’t be quartered anymore. But I bid you move on…and move out. I’ve married Mariel and I go to retrieve her, if she is even still alive. She is the lady here now, and it would be unseemly to have my former mistress in residence. I thought maintaining a friendship with you would be easy and fine, but I realize now how hurt I would feel if she flaunted a lover before my eyes and expected me to approve of the friendship. She did well to retain her kindness on the issue, and I was too obtuse to understand why it shook her trust in me. I’m not so sure I would have acted the same. I wish you and Will Scarlet all the happiness to come.”
His eyes traveled between Charlotte and Will, and then he ordered Bridget into the role of head servant, ordered provisions to be packed, and jogged above stairs to his bedchamber to prepare for his journey north.
…
Mariel sat on the floorboards, counting her breaths, recalling her archery lessons in her mind, and kept her eyes closed, though it mattered not if she opened them. It would be dark regardless. If it had not been for Teàrlach MacGregor and her sister, she might have already gone mad. Her sister, in spite of her obedience to their father, smuggled food out of the kitchen pantries and into Teàrlach’s hands. In her waning lucidity, she was still surprised. If Madeline were caught sneaking her food and interacting with one of the castle’s men without supervision, their father would surely punish her. After Mariel’s defiance, the sheriff was itching for the chance to unleash his fury. The food wasn’t much, but it varied day to day. Sometimes it was more, sometimes less, but with each setting of the sun she was growing more and more ill from the cold draftiness of the tower and lack of sunlight.
She felt tears prick her eyes, remembering Madeline’s fair face dropping in horror as she was thrust into the inner bailey, bedraggled, bruised, filthy, and frail.
She stumbled to her hands and knees. Madeline, sweet Madeline, ever faithful, rushed to her side, dropping down to hold her.
“Mariel! Sister—”
“Be gone to your chamber!” their father thundered, causing Madeline’s face to pale. “And may I never catch you seeking her, or you’ll feel my strap for it. She’s to be imprisoned and deserves no sympathy.”
For one terrifying moment, Madeline paused instead of fleeing, her arm still enveloping Mariel.
“Go, Madeline,” she croaked, shaking off her younger sister’s embrace. Their father had no qualms about using his strap, or his fist, and Madeline invited his fury if she didn’t heed his warning. “I beg you, please.”
Madeline fled to her chamber in tears. Then their father had dragged her to his dungeons in view of the onlookers, only to return for her in the middle of the night and secretly transfer her to this horrid tower so that no one would see to where she had been moved.
This tower, the source of so many childhood nightmares, abandoned long ago and so thickly encased in stone that no one could hear crying within, was a punishment Harold Crawford knew would shake her sanity.
He had charged Teàrlach with secrecy, that no one should know her whereabouts, least of all her sister. She hadn’t seen her sire since. She had no idea if he remained in residence or if he traveled again.
“Let me see my sister,” she begged Teàrlach time and again when he delivered her food or water.
He always ignored her request. As days passed, as she begged for Madeline, the hulking guardsman checked the narrow staircase leading to the tower for possible listeners, then came to her side and squatted low.
“Madeline would come if I told her where to find you.”
“Then tell her, I beg you—”
“Nay.” He placed a compassionate hand on her back. “If your faither should find out…you know that she’ll fare poorly at his hand. I’ve refused her requests for you as well. She would defy your faither to see you, but I can nay let that happen…”
It had hit Mariel then. Teàrlach was protecting them from their faither’s wrath. Protecting Madeline. Indeed, he was sweet on her younger sister, even if he had never indicated it. Such interest would surely get him demoted at best, lashings, and cast out of the castle at worst, and there was no telling what Madeline would endure for enticing the guardsman’s interest. Ridiculous, indeed, for Madeline could no sooner flirt than fly away from this hellhole.
She opened her eyes out of habit, to try to rid her mind of the image of Madeline fleeing her side in tears. Feeble light streamed through the arrow slit, the one source of air. She sat beneath it every day, hoping to inhale a breeze, and remembered being a scared wee lass on these floorboards years ago. It looked out onto the water with no view of the castle and its inhabitants. No one could hear her beg for help.
It had been many sennights since her father had locked the door behind her. Her muscles ached. Poor humors had set in from languishing in the dark cold. She shivered and boiled with sweat at the same time, and knew fever plagued her.
Teàrlach said little during his visits, but as her state of health deteriorated, he became more compassionate, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder, placing a forbidden flask of wine to her lips, or bringing a forbidden message of love from her sister. Never in a thousand years would she have pegged Teàrlach MacGregor, her father’s favored head guardsman, as a compassionate man. But he was. And she was grateful.
Hold on to hope, Lady Mariel. When Robert is free, he will come for you.
He had said these words a sennight ago, but she had already let the bleakness from childhood back into her heart. She would never escape this hell. She belonged to another man and yet her father still wielded his authority over her.
She heard the scuttling of another rat. Madness overtook her and she grabbed the chamber pot, recently emptied, waiting for the critter to arrive into the streak of light from the arrow slit. It finally did so, searching for her bare feet, and she slammed the pot down upon it hard, pummeling it until it lay dead.
She shuddered, unable to scoop up the carcass to dump out the slit just yet to send it to its watery grave like she had the others. God, she missed Robert. Her heart ached. She kicked the rat away from her sight and reached her hands into her skirts to feel Robert’s necklace and ring, items she had managed to hide. Her hair, stringy and knotted, fell into her face once more. She envisioned his smile at her love of the jewelry and felt him caress her cheek, felt him unfasten her gown…
No. She couldn’t go there. Thinking of the beauty of their wedding night would fill her with a sorrow and longing so strong she wouldn’t be able to bear it. Just the thought caused a cry to well in her throat. She strangled it, throwing her face in her hands, but felt a tumble of sobs suddenly pour forth.
Pulling her knees to her chest, she fell to keening. She was a blasted damsel in distress with no rescuer. Robert’s fate must have been horrid, for he hadn’t come, which meant he was still incarcerated or dead. Tipping over on the floor, her head wedged between the wall and the chamber pot, she hugged her arms around her knees and breathed out, giving up, shivering, sweating, filthy, and forced her eyes to stay closed.